The World She Saw
by Haraya
Summary: A retelling of Mikasa's past, set in Konohagakure no Sato. Crossover. Oneshot. Complete.


**Author's Note**: I do not own Naruto and Naruto Shippuden or any of its respective characters and am in no ways affiliated with its creator, Masashi Kishimoto-sensei. This story is written for entertainment purposes only and I am in no way profiting from it in any financial terms whatsoever.

This might be the most unoriginal thing I've ever made ever but hey, Eren's a friggin' Namikaze. I've never been _hooked _before in all my life – _hooked _being when you start writing at 10 p.m. and plan stopping by 1 a.m. and then looking at the time for the first time in forever and seeing it's two but who cares, you're having too much fun, just one more iTunes playlist and maybe another one after that, and by the time the words start coming out all slurred and your eyes start to feel a little droopy, you look at the clock and realize with a guilty kind of satisfaction that it's four in the morning and you're not even supposed to be awake anymore by twelve on a Friday (sorry Ma) – so this is practically the quickest story I've ever written, considering its length and how I finished 85% in just one sitting and all that. But then again that's probably just 'cause this is just a revision of SnK chapters 5-6 and SnK episode 7 and not an original, made-from-scratch kind of thing, so…

After Pokemon, the Naruto series have been my first real anime addiction and it has been my one and only love for five years and nine months before I discovered _SnK._ (Thank you, _Ate _Eunice for talking to me about SasuSaku and Itachi even before the Pink House and thank you _Kuya_ Augie, _Kuya_ Jamie, Kyle, and Nikko for playing it on Playstation, most especially kay Kuya Ravin _kasi nagpatalo ka_ the first time I played as Sakura against you, lololol; REMATCH FOR _KATARUNGAN_.) Even though it's no longer my favorite anime, it's been the biggest part of the childhood-to-teenagerhood part of my life (tied with the Harry Potter books) and I still feel sad when I think about how Kishimoto-sensei's gonna be ending it real soon too much (am I the only one who hopes there would be another more sinister and difficult villain to defeat after Kaguya? And another one after that? And another one after _that_?). Thank you, Sensei, for fifteen years of chakra-molding, ninjutsu-casting, genjutsu-breaking, taijutsu-training, weapon-wielding, great beast-summoning, bijuu-taming, infinite combos-pairing, feels-destroying, world of anime and Japan-introducing_, Dattebayo!_-exclaiming epicness!

P.S.: Just to warn you guys, I'll be on hiatus starting July 16 because all the spare time I have a month after that date would be spent on re-reviewing for my college entrance test coming in 48 days time (I'm suffering from a nervous breakdown already; does anybody know where I could have the Cheering Charm performed on me that isn't Hogwarts?). This would probably be my last post before the aforementioned break day but I'll try to write as much as I could before that so I could drown y'all in stories the moment it's over, but in the meantime, please enjoy…

* * *

**The World She Saw**

The little dark-haired girl with narrow, thoughtful eyes allowed herself to groan as her mother's fire-infused _chakra_ scalpel left the bit of the pale skin below her nape, and she took a few deep breaths when she felt the cold touch of a wet rag replace the searing, slow, white heat.

"Took it like a champ, Mikasa," praised a woman with narrower eyes and slightly darker skin from behind her. "No fussing or whining at all. Well done, dear!" The child bloomed with pride, practically having have heard the smile in her mother's voice, and she sighed with relief as the older woman's healing chakra soothed her skin, taking away the pain and closing her wounds but making no dent on the fan-shaped mark on her back.

For the past ten minutes, Mikasa Ackerman had been clenching her teeth and fists in an effort to restrain any sound to escape her lips as her mother etched the shape of a summer fan on her back. It was a quiet, cloudy Tuesday, the kind when even the most vicious math teacher wouldn't give their class homework to pay respect the monotonous tedium of the day, but Mikasa was far, far away from the grip of numbers and instructions on what to do with them. She was, instead, in the kitchen and dining room of their little cottage in the mountains, a good three miles away from the main residential area of Konohagakure no Sato, the Hidden Village of the Leaf. Unlike most children her age, Mikasa didn't attend school to learn the basic lessons of life before moving on to study at the Ninja Academy at the age of twelve or thirteen, but was taught at home by her civilian parents. Her parents didn't work in the usual sense of the word but almost everything they ate was either grown from her mother's humongous fruit and vegetable gardens or carefully hunted, trapped, gathered or fished for by her father in the forest and the lake behind their house. The things they couldn't provide for themselves were bought from their once-a-month, two-day stays at the village proper, where they made a living to get other inedible necessities like soap and thread and bullets with the products of Mikasa's mother's looms and the excess of whatever game, fish, or crops, whether pickled or fresh, that they have gathered the day before to sell in the marketplace.

"The summer fan, the _uchiwa_, is the symbol of my family," Mikasa's mother had explained as she tied her daughter's hair up in a bun to keep it off her back when they had settled down at the table. "It signifies our innate ability to control flames because of our _chakra_'s nature." She playfully poked Mikasa's stomach before unbuttoning the back of her daughter's dress and the little girl had giggled, pride once more forcing a grin on her face as she remembered the sensation of having the bubbling warmth of her _chakra_ leave her stomach and travel up her throat, and then opening up her eyes to see it transform into a raging ball of fire as it left her mouth, sandwiched between the calm blue of water and sky. For everyday since her ninth birthday, her mother had taken her to the lake to practice performing a _gyoukaki _an hour each day, and just yesterday, after a whole month's worth of mouth burns, she had succeeded, which was why she was now sitting on a little stool with her back straight and her head held high, proud of herself for bearing the special scarring ceremony with silent strength, just as a true-blooded of her mother's clan would. Now, with fire in her breath and the scars on her back that mimicked the red and white shape that had adorned her ancestors' clothes on the same spot centuries ago, Mikasa was _officially_ a member of her mother's clan – the Uchiha's.

The Uchiha's, as their clan was called, were an endangered race, her mother being the last pure-blooded member. More than eight hundred years ago, multiple massacres on their family have happened, always out of paranoia that they would use their special _ninjutsu_'s to wage war against the rest of Humanity. To prevent any more harm from coming to what was left of their kin, their ancestors from a hundred years past decided to live separate from one another to avoid suspicion, all in seclusion and as disguised civilians, hoping that someday the rest of the Ninja World would forget the dreaded power of their eyes and their descendants would be able to live together as ninjas in confident security and freedom. To this day, not a single Uchiha functioned as a ninja, or none that Mikasa's parents knew of anyway, and all members and their respective families had reported to avoid interaction with even the remotest of hamlets whenever possible, save perhaps for Mikasa's only aunt, the only one absent during their last secret reunion, when Mikasa was a newborn infant and had no memory whatsoever of the once-in-a-decade event.

But even thought they were forbidden to become ninjas, there were two _ninjutsus_ that each Uchiha was required to learn and pass down to their own children when the proper time came: the fireball technique, for self-defense and to honor their ancestors who invented and perfected it 2000 years ago, and the mystical palm technique for the scarring ceremony and to ensure that none of their fellow clan members must die an unnatural, violent death. This knowledge and the special scrolls that contain the set of instructions in mastering their clan's unique eye techniques had been passed down from generation to generation and little Mikasa savored the fact that she was being a part of history simply by existing and loving her family with all of her heart.

"Before I die, I will show you where the Sacred Seals and Scrolls are hidden," Mikasa's mother told her now, finishing her work on her daughter's wounds and buttoning up her dress. "And when you meet the man you wish to marry, I'll teach you how to use the _shosen jutsu_."

"But why not now?" asked Mikasa, her voice dripping with interest. She was always curious about everything around her, especially about her mother's clan secrets.

"It is to honor Lady Sakura," said her mother. "Legend has it she used to be a simple _kunoichi _with no ninja family history, very intelligent but far weaker than her team Lord Sasuke left Konoha to defeat his brother, she forced herself to defy all limits to bring him back into the light and grew to be strong because of this. The mystical palm was the first technique she learned on her quest for love, so now all Uchiha women follow her example."

"But she wouldn't have done it without Lord Naruto, right? He was her best friend and stood by her through and through when Lord Sasuke left, right?"

"That's right," her mother answered, finishing her daughter's dress and undoing the little bun on the top of Mikasa's head. "And maybe, someday, when things get better, you'll be able to live in the Village and have a friend like the Sixth."

"I'd like that," said Mikasa eagerly; as she had no siblings or friends, the prospect of having a best friend like a man who came from the Great Legends someday was more than heartily welcomed. Her head was whizzing with thoughts about her future best friend already: he would be blonde with wide, curious blue eyes like those on the paintings that belonged to the only face that grinned on the pictures of Hokage mountain. And then, when they did become friends, he would smile a special smile for her and her alone, and they would stick together until time ends but before that happened, they would watch the sun rise together every single day and laugh at the beauty of life and the world.

"Someday, I'll get married too, so that I could learn the _shosen_ and have babies of my own and we could all live together in a big house with you and Daddy and my bestfriend and just be very happy."

Her mother laughed and her father chuckled from the side of the table closest to the main door. "I would certainly wait for that day, dear," said Mr. Ackerman, looking up from the pipe that he was filling with his morning tobacco to smile at his daughter. Mikasa grinned, pleased that she made the suns of her life so happy but she stopped short when she remembered the important question she had wanted to ask them for quite some time now.

"But Mommy, how do you make a baby?"

Her mother blushed and put on the face she wore when she was about to tease her husband. "Oh, I don't know, dear," she said. "Why don't you ask your father? He's the expert on the subject."

"Okay," said Mikasa with a serious nod, oblivious to the way her father was now cringing in his seat with a red face as his wife pressed a hand to her mouth and strove to keep herself from laughing out loud. She stood up from the stool, and took the chair next to her mother and clasped her hands on the table in front of her. "Daddy, how do you make a baby?"

"I don't know, Mikasa," her father said very readily, smiling as if embarrassed and refusing to look his daughter in the eye. Mikasa thought it was strange how none of her parents knew the answer: more than half the time, they would race with one another to respond to her queries and when one of them didn't have the answer, the other would be sure to be able to give it to her in good time. "Why don't you ask Dr. Yeager when he gets here?" her father suggested.

"Okay," said Mikasa. Each year, usually during the rainy season when there are a few people to see him go up the supposedly uninhabited forests of the Hokage mountain, their family doctor would come to visit them for a check-up and to give them a year's supply of medicine. Dr. Yeager's wife had been classmates with Mr. Ackerman in secondary school before he moved to the mountains to marry Mikasa's mother but Mrs. Yeager married a year before this, and Mikasa's father had been able to convince Dr. Yeager to periodically visit them in the mountains for medical assessments, reasoning that his wife to be was of weak condition and would be greatly inconvenienced with the long journey to the residential area.

A knock came to the door and Mikasa felt herself tense. Last year, Dr. Yeager had promised to bring his son to be her friend so that she wasn't too lonely (her parents were perfect, but the idea of having someone her size who could rejoice in the unexplainable wonders of the world around her had fascinated her for as early as she could remember) and now that the moment had finally come, she found herself more nervous than excited.

"That must be him," said her father. "He's certainly earlier than expected. Just a moment, sir!" he cried the last sentence out loud and stood to take the door. Mikasa looked a little fearfully at her mother, who smiled and whispered, "Don't be afraid, dear. Everything will be alright."

And Mikasa smiled and felt braver because everything her mother ever told her was true.

**_..._**

"Mikasa?" asked a young boy about the same age as the owner of the name he just uttered; his green eyes were as curious as ever, and they shined even brighter now that he was asking a question. It was a interesting name, he thought, not at all unlike "Kakashi" or "Obito" or "Sai" any of the other names that come from The Great Legends, although try as he might to remember the stories he ever heard, he couldn't remember ever hearing about anyone named "Mikasa" who had helped stopped Kaguya from plunging the world into dreams. His own name belonged to the time of the Great Divide more than eight hundred years ago, when a whole new race of a billion civilians from the West seemingly sprung up from the ground with new ideas and culture, forever changing the ninja world with their overly peaceful and diplomatic way of life.

"Yes," answered the boy's father, an austere looking man in glasses with the same brown hair as his son. "The Ackerman's live here in the mountains and it would greatly inconvenience them to come all the way down to the village proper just for a check-up," his father went on explaining. "She is about your age and doesn't have any fellow children to play with. I would like you to be friends with her, alright?"

"That depends on what she's like," said the boy simply. "And why do _you _have to come all the way up here instead of meeting them halfway or something, Dad? Couldn't they just visit us at home when they come down to buy and sell at the market? Do you think maybe they're just avoiding contact with people or being seen in general as much as possible because they're hiding something?"

His father sighed softly. Unlike his mother who received his queer questions with a laugh or a forbidding yet gentle and kindly smile before answering him honestly in a way that never made him feel like she was suppressing him into silence or babying him, the brown-haired boy's father was, quite simply put, direct. Even when it came to parenting, Grisha Yeager was a man of science: strict yet fair but also sober to the highest degree, seldom giving regards to how his son might feel about being told (or not) of the pure and utter truth of things in such a straightforward fashion.

"Eren, that attitude of yours is exactly why you only have one friend," he said. "And as for the Ackerman's, I forbid you to ask them any questions regarding their clans. It is impolite and to some others, offensive. You know full well that although we all have ninja roots, not everyone is willing to follow the ways of old anymore." He looked to the door suspended in front of them and moved to open it, but he changed his mind halfway and proceeded to knock instead.

A week ago, his father had told the boy that he was taking him along to his medical rounds in a few days time, and he even had his wife tell the boy's school in advance that their child would not be attending classes on the date he had given. He provided his son with no explanation and had only began talking once he had finished knocking on the door of the quaint little cottage standing by itself in the deeper part of the forest behind the Second's face on the Hokage Mountain. Eren Yeager's suspicious and viciously questioning mind, however, wanted more, but he had another card in his hands that he knew would ultimately give him an edge to getting an answer. "By the way, who put the idea that they're avoiding people in your head?" continued his father.

"Armin did," said Eren, knowing that his father was more likely to be agreeable once he started quoting something his best friend had mentioned. "He says there's no way the _kekkai genkai _clans could have run out because genetically speaking, their eye power is just too strong to stop being carried from one generation to the next. They all just must be hiding somewhere, waiting for the time when the bounty hunters have all gone and they're able to come out into the open again. So maybe the Ackerman's are Hyuuga's somewhere up the line or something," he finished with a flourish, looking up at his father for the confirmation that he now knew would never come.

His father shook his head as if Eren had never said that last sentence and said instead, "Sometimes, I forget that Armin's mother's father is a Nara," he said, his straight tone failing to hide how impressed he was that a ten-year-old child could think of something as scientifically convincing as that. "The Yamanaka's are, after all, better communicators than thinkers. But I am not saying that he's correct and nor should you try to do anything to prove if he is right or wrong." He pulled out his pocket watch from his inner jacket and stared at it. "What's taking them so long?" Eren heard him murmur as he huffed, disappointed, and he found himself wondering vaguely why there were marks on the surrounding trees' branches that looked like the ones on the field nearest his home.

_Maybe she's practicing tree-hopping too, _he thought as his father opened the door after his latest calls were once again ignored, _but her chakra control's not so good yet, like mine. _He passively listened to the trouble-seeking voice in his head say that there was no way the footmarks on the branches could possibly belong to a girl his age when he heard his father gasp and step over the threshold towards something sprawled and bleeding on the floor. Eren also turned to look, blinked, and realized with a fresh and unfamiliar horror that it was a human – a _human being_ with a cleft on her head that was overflowing with scarlet – and he didn't need to step through the doorsill to know that the pair of feet and the bowed blonde head that was sticking out to his left also belonged to a murdered corpse.

"No good," he heard his father mutter from what felt like miles away. "They've both been gone for hours." He laid down the Mrs. Ackerman's arm gently and leaned over to close her eyes. "Eren, have you see a little girl around here? Did you see Mikasa?"

"No," said Eren vaguely. To keep himself from vomiting out of shock, his head had supplied him with thoughts about the rising numbers of Ninja Academy dropouts who left the moment they learned the basics to pursue some other career, the trend having started only roughly a decade ago. The first generation of losers would have already been adults, full-grown men who barely knew how to mold _chakra_ into the right places they needed to be in at the moment…

"I'm reporting this to the Police Force and requesting for a search," said his father, rising from his crouch. "You will wait for me at the base of the mountain." Eren quickly calculated the time it would take for his father to rush to the nearest Garrison Station to report the situation (only the Police and high officials were allowed to learn teleportation), and how long it would take for them to ask the main Police Force office within Wall Sina, the innermost and only original circumference of Konoha (Eren's family's place was in Shiganshina, a small district outside the outermost circular Wall, Maria, which was so big that it encompassed the backside of the Hokage mountain where most of Humanity was situated), to send the proper amount of men, who would then still have to fill up some paperwork before they even plan where to begin searching…

His ears now registered blankly that his father was repeating his name as a way of asking him for an answer but Eren couldn't care less: his thoughts were far, far away and his own body was rigid; the only current available sensation was the cold hardness of his hand curled around the handle of one of the _kunai_'s in his pouch.

* * *

_I'm hurting, _thought Mikasa. _It's cold._

When Mikasa opened her eyes, the light that blinded her was soft and sharp; she breathed in the ashes of dried sweat and burnt flesh on the dust off the floor; she heard the skies playing piano on the world outside; she tasted warmth and metal and crimson; she felt arid ice beneath her arm and ribs and hip and leg and there was a wet fire around her wrists. She blinked and realized that she was staring at the place where a whitewashed wall met a row of floorboards; there were a pair of low voices talking somewhere around her; one side of her mouth was cut and bleeding; and she was lying on her side with her hands bound tight behind her. _What? _she thought. It didn't make any sense at all.

Something rough pushed her arm so that she was now on her back, staring at the ceiling and a man with a pointed face. His mouth opened then closed, then opened then closed, then opened and closed again as if he was talking, but for some reason, Mikasa couldn't hear him. Was it possible that she had gone deaf? But through the tiny cracks that surrounded the door and window, the song of the rain was coming in, quiet but there and maybe, in another here and now, melancholic. She heard the rain falling perfectly but like the two men's words, she couldn't understand it and she wondered if she should cry for help.

She blinked again and tried to shake her head but failed. However, it was enough.

"… it was in its ultimate form! You didn't do it fast enough, and she made her eyes go back to normal before she died!"

"How the hell was I supposed to know she could do that?!"

And then, Mikasa thought she understood exactly why the sky was crying the way it did.

**_…_**

"We've been waiting for you Dr. Yeager!" Mikasa heard her father exclaim. She held her breath for the sound of a little boy's voice.

_Schlip. Chwak._

_Hmm? _thought Mikasa. Those seemed like strange sounds to answer a greeting…

She felt her mother freeze beside her and she turned to see what was bothering her. The door was open and a chilly sort of light was coming in; her father and Dr. Yeager were nowhere in sight but there were three men instead and one of them was holding a bloodied knife.

Her mother clutched her hand tightly under the table and Mikasa felt an unnatural kind of heat, one she associated with the times when she didn't properly mold a protective layer of _chakra_ over mouth as she performed a _gyoukaki_.

"Hello. Sorry for butting in like this," said one of the three man who stepped forward with a heavy-looking axe in his hand. "But if you want to live, you wouldn't put up a struggle."

The sound that came out of her mother's mouth was one Mikasa had never heard before. She rushed towards the man with the axe holding green fire in both her hands and he held onto one of her wrists as she clutched the space below his hand that was occupied with his weapon.

"OW, FUCK! SHE'S BURNING MY WRIST OFF!" the man yelled.

"Is that-? No, shit! Don't look into her eyes!" warned another.

"MIKASA! RUN! GET AWAY FROM HERE RIGHT NOW!" her mother screeched, still struggling to touch her _chakra_ scalpel to the man's face.

"Mommy?" mused Mikasa. Why was her mother showing that she could do a _shosen_ in front of these strangers who would surely hurt her if they knew? Everything was happening so quickly that it was a discomforting blur: her mother's screams, the men's bellows and the way they all struggled with one another… Maybe she could get her father to explain for her, but he was sitting against their table with his head bowed, and his clean white shirtfront had transformed into red. Without knowing why or how, chaos erupted around her.

"Daddy? Wake up, Daddy-!"

"Give me space there! We need to take her eyes before she-!"

"FIRST MAKE HER LET GO! MAKE HER RELEASE ME!"

"What? No! Stop it! Whatever you're doing to my head stop it!"

"Mommy, Daddy isn't-!"

"MIKASA! HURRY!"

"Ermm, help... I, um... n-no…"

"LET GO OFF ME, BITCH! I SAID _Mikasa's eyes widened as the axe rose into the air_ LET GO! " _and she felt the impact send wind to her face when it fell._

For a moment, nothing existed to Mikasa but her mother. The _chakra_ in her hands disappeared as her arms dropped to her side and for a moment, Mikasa thought she was alright: her back was straight and her sleek black hair was perfect as always if it weren't for the waterfall of blood that was blooming off the top of her head. And then, as if possessed by one final burst of monstrous strength, she turned around to reach a hand out to her daughter.

When she fell, there wasn't a sound, and she still looked like the most beautiful woman in the world to Mikasa, and there were black cherry blossoms in both of her red eyes as she mouthed the name of the most precious thing in the world to her.

When her body hit the ground, Mikasa heard a piercing shriek that crushed her lungs and punctured her heart and then everything was silent and still.

"WHAT THE HELL HAVE YOU DONE?!"

"But- but my arm! Can't you see what she did to my bloody arm?!"

Mikasa couldn't breathe. The stars that shone in her mother's eyes whenever she looked at her had melted away into shallow pools of darkness, emptier than the night, than nothing. Somehow, a mundane thought crept its way up her head – _It's cold._

"Listen here, you brat," said a voice somewhere in front of her. She felt the soles of her feet leave the ground and her toes barely grazed the floor. Her eyes were covered with tiny splinters of ice but she made no move to brush them away as they would only make the white drops of blood streaming from her eyes flow faster. "I don't want any more trouble from you, got that?"

Something heavy pounded on Mikasa's left cheek and she let oblivion drown her.

**_…_**

The world was mourning for her. Because she was left behind and alone.

Run, her mother had said. Get away and run. Hurry. Mikasa. _But where was I supposed to run, Mommy? Nowhere would be warm enough… now that you and Daddy are…_

The frost on the air and the pain in her heart started creeping into her bones.

_I'm cold._

* * *

"She's cute. But not my type."

"Nobody gives a damn about your type. It's her eyes that are important. When they turn red, they'll have the ability to read _chakra_ signatures and fluctuations in a fifty meter radius, copy _jutsus _from any elemental type, cast _genjutsus_, and even predict the future. We'll force her to make them show somehow, then gouge them out and give them to the highest bidder. Then, we'll sell the rest of her to the rich perverts of the black market. A face like hers _would _fetch a pretty price."

"Red eyes you say? Kinda like what her mother flashed at us earlier, then?"

Eren decided he has heard enough.

He found a broom leaning against the wall outside and a bit of twine in his pocket. He fished something out of his pouch and fused all three in a way that would suit him most later on. He placed his invention on the wall opposite the door of the little shack and bit below his right thumb until it bled. Then he hid the same hand behind his back, this time not at all empty, and knocked with his other hand.

The door opened and a man peered out. He had to be about twice Eren's height and width and he bellowed, "You! What the hell are you doing here?!"

"Please, sir," Eren pretended to sob, the tears in his eyes over the pain in his hand spilling out into his cheeks. "I've been walking around the woods and I lost myself. It began to rain, and I saw your cottage and I…" He hiccupped and screwed his face up a little more.

The man blinked at him as if he had never seen a little boy before and hid his face behind the door as if to take hints from a hidden person to his right. When he reemerged, there was smile sloppily applied to his face and when he spoke, his voice was a few pitches higher. "You poor little thing. Why don't you let me walk you back home before your mother worries about you? Little tykes like you shouldn't be wandering around so late in the forest, what with wolves and-"

Mikasa's father died with a stab to the chest. His wife died with an axe to the head. Eren didn't have an axe, nor was his _chakra_ control flawless enough to ensure that the swift motion of his arm would be enough to bury his knife deep enough into a heart shielded by muscle and fat. So he plunged his into the man's throat instead.

"Thank you, mister," he whispered, his voice sounding strangely old and trembling. He shoved the sandpapery palms and fingers that had suddenly tensed on his head away to the side with his free hand. "But I've learned that lesson already. Die, asshole!" He twisted his _kunai _as he swiped it across the man's neck, and Eren's shoes were covered with little speckles of red when the figure with a heavily-bandaged wrist hit the floor with a dull thud.

He gave Mikasa a quick passing glance (_her hair's pretty like her mother's_) and rested his eyes on the shocked, amber eyes that stared at the still figure lying by the door at Eren's feet. When they clashed with his green ones, he dropped his wet knife and closed the door slowly, then rushed to his creation and posed to focus _chakra_ to his feet and legs. But there wasn't enough time for him to even get his adrenaline under control – the door exploded outwards and Eren ran screaming, throwing all the weight unto the makeshift spear in his hands, and when they met home, he jumped and landed on the man, gathering all the rage boiling within him into his arms and hands.

"Die!" he commanded, twisting his _kunai _away from its restraints and thrusting it into the man's chest.

"You beast! _A stab for Mr. Ackerman, a friend to both his parents. _You motherfucking beast! _A stab for Mrs. Ackerman, a woman and a mother. _Animals like you deserve death! _A stab for Mikasa, harmless and innocent. _Don't you dare get up again!" _And _stab_._

Then silence.

_**…**_

The boy was panting when he finished. He wiped the blood off his cheek with the back of his palm that was holding his knife, and then turned to Mikasa to say, "Don't worry. It's alright now."

He panted a little more then rose and walked towards her. She didn't know when exactly she had risen into a sitting position but she felt herself shrink as he approached, terrified of the green fire that had been in his eyes just now, which was now looking surprisingly gentle and for some reason, slightly embarrassed.

Mikasa forced herself to stop trembling when he felt him hold her bound hands and started cutting the chords that trapped her. "You must be Mikasa," he said. "I'm Eren Yeager, Dr. Yeager's son." She heard the whisper of the blade breaking through her ropes and instinctively brought her hands forward to rub them back to life, finally finding the words to express the strange nagging sensation that refused to let relief seep into her chest. "There were three of them," she told him. There were enough moments for her to take in that her savior had brown hair like the earth, tan skin as if spent a good deal of time beneath the sun, and that his eyebrows slanted inward naturally so that he always looked like he was deep in thought or angry.

And then the door opened.

They both stared at the tall, crow-like man for a while like frightened deer, and the tall, crow-like man stared at the corpses in the room for a while, not unlike a frightened deer himself. And then, something snapped behind his eyes and the sight of this seemed to slap Eren in the face and into action: he lunged for his used _kunai _but a foot met him halfway and he was flung across the other side of the room, clutching his stomach and groaning in pain.

"You prick!" the man shrieked, crossing the room and lifting the boy by the collar like he was a rag doll. "Did you do this to them, huh? Did you?!"

Mikasa stared at the proceedings like she wasn't even in the same room but sailing over the skies, somewhere where clouds hovered in perpetuity and everything was numb and grey. _Again? _she thought. _Again, _her head confirmed, and for some reason, she was okay with this.

And then, she watched as the fire burned back in the boy's eyes as he fought to break free and Mikasa thought it was the most beautiful color she had ever seen before the fear came crashing back to her like a waterfall. She gasped, like something physical was actually smothering her and shuddered as the word _Again _turned into _Not again_.

_Never again! _Eren's eyes seemed to scream at her. "Fight!" he choked out.

She pushed herself off the floor, picked up the boy's knife and took a spot behind the man. _It's coming at me, _she thought._ It's out to get me. The darkness…_

"I can't," she stammered, willing herself to look away from the red at the tip of the blade in her spastic hands to keep herself from retching. "I can't!"

"Fight!" Eren yelled back. Spit was starting to hover at the corner of his lips but he strove to keep on screaming at her anyway. "If we lose, we die. If we win, we live. If we don't fight, we'll never win! So, fight! Fight and win! FIGHT!"

And for some reason,_ Mikasa is back on the strawberry patch on her mother's massive fruit garden. They are harvesting strawberries to turn into jam and jelly and eat raw and to sell at the market place tomorrow where, if she would be a good girl and helped them for the rest of the day, her parents might buy her an embroidery set of her own _and she is surrounded by red everywhere she looked in the little room, red bodies, red knife, red scarf.

_... I've seen this before. I've just pretended not to notice..._

_She takes a quick break to watch a beautiful moth quiver in the clutch of a praying mantis. It struggles to break free but with each flutter of its wings, the mantis's fangs dive deeper into its fragile, already crushed body _the same way Eren was kicking and clawing and gasping for his breath, but the man only squeezed tighter, and tighter, and tighter still.

_...This world is cruel and merciless..._

_She hears her father's voice calling out to her and her mother. She turns around to give him a smile and welcome him back before rushing to his arms and kissing him, but she finds that she couldn't because in one of his hands, he is carrying his gun, and on the other, he is holding a dead duck by the neck. Her mother claps her hands over the prospect of having roasted duck for dinner tonight and Mikasa smiles at her father all the same but as she does, it is as if her lips are wounded as she wonders what would happen to the dead bird's ducklings: who would feed them, who would look after them, who would watch them take flight for the first time and feel proud of them as they did? _The strong devour the weak...

_...If we don't fight, we'll never win! _**_ !_**

For one split-second, the world was covered in blood, but when Mikasa blinked, she saw that Eren's _chakra_ was wavering, threatening to burn the green of his eyes out forever, but she also saw exactly where the man's heart was – she watched herself running forward with the weapon in her hands and completely diminishing the light blue glow that throbbed within that small muscle on the left side of their attacker's body.

She set out to fulfill her vision, her unleashed _chakra_ breaking the floorboard she was standing on and creating a dent on her _kunai_, the one _tomoe _of her awakened _Sharingan _spinning rapidly as she yelled out a battle cry and dived.

* * *

"…I did the world a favor by putting some of its rabid dogs to sleep! They just happen to look like humans sometimes, that's all!"

"That's not the point, Eren!" said Eren's father with almost as much heat as his son. He was kneeling in front of Eren with his hands boring into the boy's shoulders with so much force that Eren wouldn't be surprised if he found himself buried up to his neck in the ground in a minute or less. "I thought I told you to stay at the base of the mountain!"

"The Police Force only just got here! If I haven't done anything, they would already be miles away!"

"That's not the point!" his father repeated, shaking Eren's shoulders until all the anger rumbling within his chest transformed into fear of the rage in his father's eyes. "You have done a very brave thing but I do not want you to just carelessly throw your life away like that! That's what I'm so mad about right now!"

Tears started to sting Eren's eyes as he remembered the blackness that had constricted his heart just an hour ago and how he very nearly had his life squeezed out of him, but before it was able to consume him, his head envisioned what those men would have done to her if he hadn't been able to get there in time. His eyes started smarting for an entirely different reason. "But I just wanted to save her in time!" he cried.

At this, his father was silenced, and the anger in his eyes melted into something like sympathy and fatherly pride. Relief swept over Eren at the sight of glowing amber but the sensation disappeared in a blink as his father looked to his right.

His green eyes followed and they found Mikasa with his father's coat hanging limply over her slumped shoulders. She looked as if had been trying to set the wet world on fire with her hollow, hollow eyes, but now knew within herself that she had run out of fuel and that there was nothing left for her to do anymore but curl up beneath an invisible rain of frozen needles and empty darkness.

"Mikasa," said Eren's father, stepping forward with a kind smile. "Do you remember me? I'm Dr. Yeager. We met several times before when you were younger."

"Dr. Yeager…" she said, still staring at her bare feet. "where… where should I go from here? It's cold. I don't have a home anymore."

Eren felt his own heart rip in half at the sound of pure defeat in her voice. He knew he had to do something other than just promising to never let anybody know of her bloodline to keep anything like this ever happen again, but what? He automatically remembered the time when Armin had lost his parents to rouge ninjas beyond the Walls of Konoha. The blonde had broken down the moment he and his grandfather received the news and on the following days and nights, Eren had cried with him as well, shattered by the unbearable sadness his best friend was going through and the fact that he could do nothing to take hurt away, or at least shoulder some of its weight in his friend's stead. For the first time in his life, he had known what it was like to be helpless and weak, incapable of making even the slightest change to help make things better for a loved one.

But now was different; he knew it, it had to be different. There was something he could do this time, something he could do with the rest of his family and maybe even with his one friend and he wondered why it had taken his brain so long a time to supply him with the notion. He was powerless when it came to turning back the time and giving the lost girl standing in front of him back her previous life, but he could give her the next best thing: he could give her a new one, not as perfect, not as happy, not as whole as before, but just as loving as her previous existence, just as kind and just as warm.

He looked to his father wordlessly for approval and he received it with a nod. Walking towards Mikasa with his fingers brushing against the pulse in his neck, Eren knew exactly what he had to do.

**_…_**

Something blocked Mikasa's vision and she raised a hand in surprise. It came and it went from her line of sight as if encircling her until she lost her vision completely, her face covered by something soft and dark which she could only describe as cloth.

"Huh?" she muttered when it fell away from her eyes and revealed Eren's set face.

"You can keep that," said the boy. It seemed that there was something wrong with him, but Mikasa was too focused on the shy, well-meaning glow in his eyes to give it much thought. "It's warm isn't it?" She stared at him a little longer until she realized that his scarf was missing. It was, instead, wrapped around her neck and she moved the hand she had lifted to touch it.

She bowed her head and nuzzled the strip of cotton to her nose: it smelled of the woods and the mountains, of the lake and their stall at the marketplace, of freshly-laundered linen and the polished floors of her house, of her favorite soup and freshly squeezed fruit juice, of her mother's sweet-smelling hair and the smoke of her father's evening pipe. "It's warm," she confirmed to Eren with a whisper. Even her heart wasn't shivering as much it had been anymore.

"Mikasa," said Dr. Yeager, "why don't you come live with us?"

"Huh?" she asked again, startled by the sudden brightness his question brought to the gloom in her existence. In the firelight, Dr. Yeager's smile wasn't that different from her father's.

"You've had a long day," he continued, "and you need plenty of rest."

Mikasa stared at the man's kind amber eyes uncomprehendingly, hardly daring to believe her ears and what his words might ultimately mean. She listened to something that might have been an impatient little scoff before she watched Eren take a hold of the end of her right sleeve and tug on it as he began to walk. "What are you waiting for?" he asked, looking back at her with his brightly burning green eyes. "Let's go home already."

_It's warm. _It wasn't over. _Come live with us. _There was still someone who cared. _Let's go _home…

The world has never looked so beautiful.

"Yes," she said, and her heart felt as warm as the tears trailing down her face, as warm as the scarf around her neck, as warm as her soul. "Let's go home."

And, hand in hand, they went.

_fin_

* * *

Shingeki no Kyojin characters and storyline X world and laws of the world of Naruto = pure awesomesauce. I WILL make more of these. I've got a lot of ideas brewing in my head but the clearest so far are a little JeanMarco Bromance (not ROmance; any yaoi, yuri, and NSFW requests will strictly be ignored and instantaneously disposed of), and a Teacher-Student LeviMika (close enough I guess Rinoa-chan?) drabbles, so expect them to come anytime soon(er or later). I'll accept requests the moment I've brought all my headcanons to life so feel free to make a list of your own and get ready to pelt them at me the moment I squeal "_Ike!_"


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